But the most expensive item on the list is “Medicare for All,” which is a scheme concocted by Bernie Sanders to have the government pay for everything.

Would this be a good idea? In a column for Forbes, Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute explains that government-run healthcare in the United Kingdom has some very unfriendly features.

Nearly a quarter of a million British patients have been waiting more than six months to receive planned medical treatment from the National Health Service, according to a recent report from the Royal College of Surgeons. More than 36,000 have been in treatment queues for nine months or more. …Consider how long it takes to get care at the emergency room in Britain. Government data show that hospitals in England only saw 84.2% of patients within four hours in February. …Wait times for cancer treatment — where timeliness can be a matter of life and death — are also far too lengthy. According to January NHS England data, almost 25% of cancer patients didn’t start treatment on time despite an urgent referral by their primary care doctor. …And keep in mind that “on time” for the NHS is already 62 days after referral.

And both produce bad outcomes. Here’s some of the data from the British system.

Unsurprisingly, British cancer patients fare worse than those in the United States. Only 81% of breast cancer patients in the United Kingdom live at least five years after diagnosis, compared to 89% in the United States. Just 83% of patients in the United Kingdom live five years after a prostate cancer diagnosis, versus 97% here in America.

The best part of Sally’s column is that she explains how the flaws in the U.K. system are being copied by Bernie Sanders and other supporters.

Great Britain’s health crisis is the inevitable outcome of a system where government edicts, not supply and demand, determine where scarce resources are allocated. Yet some lawmakers are gunning to implement precisely such a system in the United States. The bulk of the Democratic Party’s field of presidential candidates — including Senators Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren — co-sponsored Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2017 “Medicare for All” bill. That plan would abolish private insurance and put all Americans on a single government-run plan… Britons face long waits for poor care under their country’s single-payer system. That’s not the sort of healthcare model the American people are looking for.

The bottom line is that Medicare for All would further exacerbate the third-party payer problem that already plagues the health care system.

And that means ever-escalating demand, rising costs, and inefficiencies.

I very much suspect Obama partisans and Trump partisans won’t like this column, but the sad reality is that both Obamacare and Trump’s protectionism have a lot in common.

In both cases, government is limiting the freedom of buyers and sellers to engage in unfettered exchange.

In both cases, the fiscal burden of government increases.

In both cases, politicians misuse statistics to expand the size and scope of government.

Today, let’s add another item to that list.

In both cases, the Washington swamp wins thanks to increased cronyism and corruption.

To see what I mean, let’s travel back in time to 2011. I wrote a column about Obamacare and cited some very persuasive arguments by Tim Carney that government-run healthcare (or, to be more accurate, expanded government control of healthcare) was creating a feeding frenzy for additional sleaze in Washington.

Congress imposes mandates on other entities, but gives bureaucrats the power to waive those mandates. To get such a waiver, you hire the people who used to administer or who helped craft the policies. So who’s the net winner? The politicians and bureaucrats who craft policies and wield power, because this combination of massive government power and wide bureaucratic discretion creates huge demand for revolving-door lobbyists.

I then pointed out that the sordid process of Obamacare waivers was eerily similar to a passage in Atlas Shrugged.

Wesley Mouch…issued another directive, which ruled that people could get their bonds “defrozen” upon a plea of “essential need”: the government would purchase the bonds, if it found proof of the need satisfactory. …One was not supposed to speak about the men who…possessed needs which, miraculously, made thirty-three frozen cents melt into a whole dollar, or about a new profession practiced by bright young boys just out of college, who called themselves “defreezers” and offered their services “to help you draft your application in the proper modern terms.” The boys had friends in Washington.

Well, the same thing is happening again. Only this time, as reported by the New York Times, protectionism is the policy that is creating opportunities for swamp creatures to line their pockets.

The Trump administration granted seven companies the first set of exclusions from its metal tariffs this week and rejected requests from 11 other companies, as the Commerce Department began slowly responding to the 20,000 applications that companies have filed for individual products. …several companies whose applications were denied faced objections from American steel makers. …companies that have applied for the exclusions criticized the exercise as both long and disorganized. “This is the most screwed-up process,” said Mark Mullen, president of Griggs Steel, a steel distributor in the Detroit area. “This is a disservice to our industry and the biggest insult to our intelligence that I have ever seen from the government.”

From an economic perspective, it certainly is true that this new system is “disorganized” and “a disservice” and an “insult to our intelligence.” Those same words could be used to describe the welfare state, the EEOC, farm subsidies, the tax code, and just about everything else the government does.

But there’s one group of people who are laughing all the way to the bank, The lobbyists, consultants, fixers, and other denizens of the swamp are getting rich. Whether they’re preparing the applications, lobbying for the applications, or lobbying against the applications, they are getting big paychecks.

And the longer this sordid protectionist process continues, we will see a repeat of what happened with Obamacare as senior-level people in government move through the revolving door so they can get lucrative contracts to help clients manipulate the system (yes, Republicans can be just as sleazy as Democrats).

I don’t focus much on media bias because journalists generally aren’t dishonest. Instead, they choose which stories to highlight or downplay based on what advances their political agenda. Though every so often I’ll highlight an example of where bias leads to an egregious (maybe even deliberately dishonest) mistake.

And how about when the New York Times published a story about schools being “starved of funding” when even a cursory look at the data would confirm outlays have climbed substantially.

Now we have an addition to that collection from a WonkBlog column in the Washington Post. The piece starts with an accurate observation that the tax plan on Capitol Hill isn’t a long-run tax cut.

Senate rules require the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act not to add to the federal deficit after 10 years. …The bill aims to cut corporate taxes in perpetuity…but they actually need to raise money to offset the permanent corporate tax reduction.

Yes, as I wrote two weeks ago, the long-run tax cuts have to be offset by long-run revenue increases. So that part of the column is fine.

We then get this rather dubious assertion.

Republicans are paying for a permanent cut for corporations with an under-the-radar tax increase on individuals.

But that’s only part of the problem. As you can see from this next excerpt, he cites a former Democrat staffer and doubles down on the allegation that individual taxpayers will be coughing up more money to Uncle Sam because of the legislation.

This chart, playing off what the Senate’s former top tax aide and New York University professor Lily Batchelder pointed out on Twitter on Friday evening, makes vividly clear where Republicans ultimately raise that money. …we know it’s individual taxpayers who ultimately bear the cost of the tax bill.

And here’s the chart that ostensibly shows that you and me are going to pay more money so evil corporations can enjoy a tax cut.

Notice, however, the part I circled in green. It shows that Republicans are repealing Obamacare’s individual mandate as part of their tax reform plan, and it also shows that repeal has budgetary effects.

So how is this a tax increase (the pink portion of the bar chart), as the Washington Post wants us to believe?

Needless to say, the honest answer is that it isn’t a tax hike. Getting rid of the mandate means people won’t get “fined” by the IRS if they choose not to buy health insurance. If anything, that should count as a tax cut.

But that’s not what’s represented by the pink part of the bar chart. Instead, it shows that when you get rid of the mandate and consumers choose not to get Obamacare policies, that automatically means that insurance companies will get fewer subsidies from Uncle Sam (getting access to that cash was one of the reasons the big insurance companies lobbied for Obamacare).

In other words, the chart actually is showing that corporate rate reduction is partially financed by a reduction in spending, which is a win-win from my perspective.

By the way, you don’t have to believe me. On page 9 of the Joint Committee on Taxation’s revenue estimate (which presumably will be posted on the JCT website at some point), you find this footnote about the “outlay effect” of repealing the mandate.

At the risk of stating the obvious, an “outlay effect” is when a change in law causes a shift in government spending. That’s what’s happening, not a tax increase on individuals.

By the way, the author sort of admits this is true in a passage buried near the bottom of the column.

…a number of analysts argue that it’s wrong to consider the loss of insurance related to the end of the ACA mandate a tax increase, because it reflects individuals’ choice not to get insurance.

That’s a pathetic attempt at justifying a dishonest article.

Here’s the bottom line.

Individuals will be paying less money to the IRS because of this provision, not more.

The fiscal impact of the provision is less spending, not more tax revenue.

Sadly, most readers will have no idea that they were deliberately misled.

P.S. The “alternative inflation measure” in the bill (the red portion of the bar chart) arguably is a tax increase. Or, for those who persuasively argue that it’s a more accurate measure, it’s a provision that will result in individual taxpayers sending more money to Uncle Sam compared to current law since the new measure (chained CPI) will result in smaller inflation adjustments to tax brackets and the standard deduction.

P.P.S. If repealing just one small piece of Obamacare will save about $300 billion over the next decade, imagine how much money we could save if the entire law was repealed.

P.P.P.S. Since I’ve previously explained how politicians use alchemy to turn spending increases into tax cuts, I guess it’s not surprising that some folks are using the same magic to turn spending cuts into tax increases.

And as Milton Friedman wisely observed, that approach (known as “third-party payer”) undermines normal market incentives for lower costs. Indeed, it’s a green light for ever-higher costs, which is exactly what we see in the parts of the healthcare system where government programs or insurance companies pick up most of the tab.

For what it’s worth, I’m not overflowing with confidence that the new Obamacare-replacement proposal from Republicans will have much impact on the third-party payer crisis. And it probably doesn’t solve some of the Obamacare-specific warts in the system. If you want to get depressed about those issues, read what Michael Cannon, Philip Klein, and Christopher Jacobs have written about the new GOP plan.

But healthcare in America is also a fiscal issue. And if we’re just looking at the impact of the American Health Care Act on the burden of government spending and taxes, I’m a bit more cheerful.

The Congressional Budget Office released its official score on the impact of the legislation. Here’s the excerpt that warmed my heart.

Outlays would be reduced by $1.2 trillion over the period, and revenues would be reduced by $0.9 trillion. The largest savings would come from reductions in outlays for Medicaid and from the elimination of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA’s) subsidies for nongroup health insurance. … parts of the legislation would repeal or delay many of the changes the ACA made to the Internal Revenue Code… Those with the largest budgetary effects include: • Repealing the surtax on certain high-income taxpayers’ net investment income; • Repealing the increase in the Hospital Insurance payroll tax rate for certain high-income taxpayers; • Repealing the annual fee on health insurance providers; and • Delaying when the excise tax imposed on some health insurance plans with high premiums would go into effect.

And fellow wonks will be interested in this table.

By the way, the “two cheers” in the title may be a bit too generous. After all, there should be full reform of Medicare and Medicaid. Though I suppose some of that can happen (at least Medicaid, hopefully) as part of the regular budget process.

It’s also unfortunate that Republicans are creating a new refundable tax credit (and when you see the term “refundable tax credit,” that generally is a sneaky euphemism for more government spending that is laundered through the tax code, sort of like the EITC) to replace some of the Obamacare subsidies that are being repealed.

So it’s far from ideal.

For those who want to see the glass as being half-full rather than half-empty, however, Ryan Ellis has a very upbeat assessment in a column for Forbes.

It’s a net spending cut of over $1.2 trillion and a net tax cut of nearly $900 billion over the next decade. …the score shows that the AHCA would be a large and permanent tax cut for families and employers….This should lower the tax revenue baseline considerably, perhaps even by half a percentage point of the economy.

I like starving the beast, so I agree this is a good thing.

And I also agree with Ryan that the resulting lower tax burden on dividends and capital gains is very positive. After all, double taxation is probably the most pernicious feature of the internal revenue code.

The most pro-growth tax cut in the bill is the elimination of the so-called “NIIT” or “net investment income tax.” It adds on a 3.8 percentage point surtax on savers and investors. By eliminating NIIT, the bill cuts the capital gains and dividends tax from 23.8 percent in 2017 to 20 percent in 2018 and beyond. …The contribution limit to HSAs is doubled, from nearly $7000 for families today to $14,000 starting in 2018.

Back in 2013, I got very upset when I learned that senior bureaucrats at the IRS awarded themselves big bonuses, notwithstanding the fact that the agency was deeply tarnished by scandal because of its efforts to help Obama’s reelection campaign.

That’s when I decided to put forth my “First Theorem of Government,” which simply states that the public sector is a racket for the benefit of a ruling class comprised of bureaucrats, interests groups, cronies, and other insiders.

The same thing is true on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. The U.K.-based Daily Mailreports that senior bureaucrats in the country’s government-run healthcare system get lavish taxpayer-financed pension.

Hundreds of NHS managers have amassed million-pound pension pots while presiding over the worst financial crisis in the history of the health service… As patients face crippling delays for treatment, A&E closures and overcrowded wards, bureaucrats have quietly been building up huge taxpayer-funded pensions. They will be handed tax-free six-figure lump sums on retirement, and annual payouts from the age of 60 of at least £55,000 – guaranteed for life.

Here are some of the details, all of which must be especially aggravating for the mistreated patients who suffer because of substandard care from the government.

Nearly 300 directors on NHS trust boards have accrued pension pots valued at £1million or more; At least 36 are sitting on pots in excess of £1.5million – with three topping a staggering £2 million; The NHS pays a staggering 14.3 per cent on top of employees’ salary towards their pension – almost five times the average of 3 per cent paid in the private sector; …About 500 earn more than the Prime Minister – after Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt ordered them to ‘show restraint’ on executive pay. …the scheme every year pays retired staff £10 billion more than it takes in. That black hole has to be filled by the taxpayer. The subsidies enable NHS executives – including managers, human resources bosses and directors of ‘corporate administration’ – to build up vast pensions, at minimal personal expense.

Here’s the bureaucrat with the biggest pile of loot from taxpayers.

The biggest single beneficiary is Professor Tricia Hart, who retired as chief executive of South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in January with a £2.6 million pension. That figure entitled her to a lump sum of at least £335,000 on retirement, plus an inflation-proof annual pension of £110-115,000. …at least four HR directors have amassed million-pound pensions.

By the way, I have nothing against people accumulating big nest eggs. Even if they work for the government.

My objection, as discussed in yesterday’s column about state and local bureaucrats in America, is when bureaucrats have special taxpayer-financed deals.

Especially, as we see all too often in the U.K., when taxpayers don’t even get good healthcare in exchange for the lavish salaries and benefits.

Almost four million people are now waiting for cataract surgery, hip and knee replacements and other routine operations. The number of people forced to wait more than four hours in A&E has doubled in two years. And wards are full of elderly people who cannot be discharged – because there are no care home places for them.

A spin doctor tried to rationalize and justify the cozy scheme for bureaucrats.

…a spokesman for NHS Pensions stressed that…The amounts individuals accrued were a result of the ‘rules and regulations’ of the NHS scheme. ‘What people get paid is a matter for NHS trusts,’ he added.

I’m amused by the assertion that the lavish pensions are the result of simply following the “rules and regulations.” That’s precisely the point. Government insiders write the rules and regulations and they inevitably produce systems that are very good for them and not so good for taxpayers.

I’m also amused (and when I write “amused,” I actually mean “irritated” or “appalled”) at the claim that compensation levels are “a matter for NHS trusts”. If the spin doctor was talking about a private company, I would agree. As I’ve argued before, pay levels in private companies should be determined by managers and stockholders.

But we’re talking in this case about pay levels in a government bureaucracy. And notwithstanding the elitist attitude of some government officials, taxpayers have every right to get outraged when they learn that their money is being squandered on excessive pay and gold-plated benefits.

Business-as-usual transportation bill – The desire of Congress to fund pork-barrel transportation projects is at least somewhat constrained by the amount of revenue generated by the gas tax. There was an opportunity for reform in 2015 because proposed spending was much higher than the trajectory of gas tax revenue, but rather than even engage in a discussion of good policy options, politicians merely bickered over what combination of tax hikes and budget gimmicks they could put together to keep the pork projects flowing.

Creeping support on the right for the value-added tax – When I wrote early last year that the 2016 election might create an opportunity for tax reform, I was being hopeful that we might get something close to a simple and fair flat tax. Yet probably the biggest news so far in this election cycle is that a couple of candidates who presumably favor small government – Rand Paul and Ted Cruz – have proposed to impose a value-added tax without fully repealing the income tax.

There’s very little good news to celebrate. Here’s my tragically sparse list, and you’ll notice that my list of victories is heavy on style and light on substance. But let’s take what we can get.

Semi-decent Republican budgets – The budget resolution produced by Congress technically doesn’t embrace specific policies, but the it’s nonetheless noteworthy that the House and Senate approved numbers that – at least conceptually – are based on genuine Medicaid and Medicare reform.

Instead, I feel obliged to issue somewhat of a retraction for my assertion that Obama care is a job killer.

Some of you may be scratching your heads, particularly if you read these passages from an article earlier this week in The Hill.

ObamaCare will force a reduction in American work hours — the equivalent of 2 million jobs over the next decade, Congress’s nonpartisan scorekeeper said Monday. The total workforce will shrink by just under 1 percent as a result of changes in worker participation because of the new coverage expansions, mandates and changes in tax rates, according to a 22-page report released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). …the law changes incentives over the years for the workers themselves both in part-time and full-time positions.

Well, some readers may have concluded from my writings that Obamacare is an absolute job killer.

Yet, as we see from this story in the Kansas City Star, there may be some jobs being created because of the so-called Affordable Care Act. Here are some relevant excerpts.

H&R Block expects more customers to feel the impact of the Affordable Care Act when they do their taxes early next year, providing a source of growth for the Kansas City-based business. A year ago, Block invested in marketing and training its tax preparers… “We think we’re going to start to reap the benefits of that investment,” Block chief executive Bill Cobb said Tuesday during a strategy session with analysts. …the company said an early effort will be aimed at getting back customers the company lost last year.

To be sure, H&R Block isn’t explicitly saying that it will have additional employees, but I think we can infer that some new positions will be created as the company takes advantage of the fact that many taxpayers will be overwhelmed by the complexities and penalties that are part of Obamacare.

With this in mind, I’m going to be very careful in the future to state that the President’s law is a net job killer or a relative job killer.

After all, I wouldn’t want anyone to accuse me of being unfairly or inaccurately critical of government-run healthcare. Even in cases when the jobs being created are evidence of bad legislation rather than a good economic climate.

P.S. I’m not a big fan of H&R Block. Assuming they didn’t support Obamacare, I don’t blame them for enjoying the extra profits they’ll earn because of the law. But the company has supported government rules to block competition in the tax-compliance industry. And I remember many years ago being part of a debate in Louisiana where a representative from H&R Block argued against the flat tax. Gee, I wonder why?